


Clusterfuck

by fredbassett



Series: Stephen/Ryan series [99]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5992765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Trouble doesn’t just come in one simple package for the ARC team when an anomaly opens in the small Somerset village of Wookey Hole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Anomaly Research Centre. 10.25am.**

“I presume there’s utterly no point in asking when we’re likely to have a full-strength military contingent again, is there, Ryan?” Lester said.

He knew it was a pointless – and unfair – question, but for a month he’d had to watch what was left of Ryan’s men run themselves ragged working double shifts with little or no downtime while Lyle and several of the team were off doing something several levels above even Lester’s security clearance.

The problem had been compounded by most of Stringer’s team being tied up in central London, due to heightened fears of terrorist activity in the capital. To make up the numbers Lester had resorted to pulling three people away from the subsidiary operation at Farnley Hall, just to bolster the numbers working out of the ARC. On Ryan’s advice they’d brought over Sean Burns, a tough sergeant who been riding shotgun on scientific missions beyond the anomaly cluster for the past few months, plus two of the ex-mercenaries –private military contractors, as they were now known – that they’d kept on after Mason’s operation had been dismantled. The military support were now working in two four-man teams, one headed by Ryan, the other by Burns, with one PMC attached to each. It wasn’t enough, and they all knew it. Both teams were exhausted, and so were the civilians. The whole situation was an accident waiting to happen.

The problem was that, for once, dinosaur incursions were deemed to be the lesser of two evils, at least where Downing Street was concerned. The Prime Minister seemed convinced it was easier to keep dinosaurs out of the headlines than terrorists. As a result, Claudia was looking almost as harassed as the soldiers.

To Ryan’s credit, the captain allowed no hint of his own frustrations and concerns to surface as he just shook his head and said, “Sorry, sir. The DSF knows we’re stretched, but there’s bugger all he can do at the moment.”

Lester resisted the impulse to sigh. He knew perfectly well he was on edge having heard nothing from Lyle for four weeks. The other men’s wives and girlfriends were no doubt in a similar state, despite how imperturbable Lorraine Wickes appeared to be most of the time. Working closely with her as he did, however, meant Lester knew perfectly well her calm was only skin deep. He’d heard her swear vehemently under her breath when a computer crash had lost her half an hour’s work the previous afternoon. He’d dispensed coffee and chocolate biscuits and they’d shared a few moments of mutual sympathy. Rationally, Lester knew that the Director of Special Forces didn’t have endless recourses, but irrationally, he wanted to ring the man up and yell at him very loudly.

The harsh summons of the ADD alarm brought Lester and Ryan to their feet in the same instant, Lester’s reactions as conditioned now as those of the rest of the team when it came to responding to its siren call. Even though he rarely accompanied the response teams into the field, he liked to know at first hand what was happening.

Lester reached the atrium a few paces behind Ryan. As he arrived he saw several lights start to flash on Connor’s bank of screens. That was never a good sign…

Anomaly Research Centre. 10.27am.

“It’s a cluster!” Connor announced, his voice hovering somewhere on the fine dividing line between excitement and horror.

“How many?” Cutter wanted to know.

“Where?” Ryan demanded, trying to follow the map on the screen as it automatically homed in on the multiple signals transmitting to the detection device.

“Three… no, four…” Connor answered, his fingers flying over the keyboard in front of him in an elegant dance that meant utterly bugger all to Ryan. A moment later Connor announced, “Somerset…. Give me a sec…. Wookey Hole, by the look of it…”

Ryan heard Lester let out a soft curse. He swung around, eyebrows raised.

“Major tourist attraction,” Lester said. “Caves and a mill, plus a load of fairground stuff.”

“Caves?” Ryan was now certain getting out of bed that morning had been a mistake. Every member of his team with any significant caving experience was away on the same op as Lyle. Their particular specialist skills had been needed, so he’d been told, but Lester wasn’t privy to that particular piece of information, nor was anyone else, for that matter.

“I’m afraid so.” Lester turned to one of the communications technicians at another desk in the operations centre in the atrium. “Raj, get me the manager at Wookey Hole on the phone. His name’s Daniel Medlar.”

“The chopper?” Ryan queried. In his view there was no point in having a new toy and not making full use of it.

Lester nodded. “There’re roadworks all along the M4 and the A303’s no better. It took me nearly three hours the last time I went to the cottage and it’s not improved much since. The helicopter will get us there significantly quicker.” At Ryan’s undisguised look of surprise, his boss said, “Of course I’m coming with you. I know the site, none of the rest of you do. I also know the manager.”

Ryan thumbed his radio to an open channel that would reach every member of the military team in the building, knowing that wherever he was, Stephen would be ensuring the civilian team were also mobilising.

“Code Red,” he said calmly. “All personnel to the chopper immediately. Full kit. I repeat, all personnel to the chopper immediately, with full kit. Code Red.”

Code Red basically meant drop what the hell you’re doing and get your arse in gear. It seemed to be the only sort of call they ever got these days.

He heard a chorus of answering voices, including that of Gareth Walsh, their civilian pilot, now a permanent member of the team. Walsh was ex-SF. He’d lost a foot to an IED in Helmand Province and had subsequently retrained as a chopper pilot. When the ARC had found itself in possession of some very expensive kit, Walsh had been an obvious choice to bring on board. Ryan had put him through re-certification on weapons and assessed his field competence. He’d passed with the same easy confidence he brought to bear on anything. Walsh was a shit-hot pilot who could land their £5.5 million Eurocopter EC155 practically anywhere, on any ground conditions.

Connor was already sending details of their destination to the on-board navigation systems on Big Bird, as their transport was generally known, and Lester was now on the phone to someone at Wookey Hole, ordering the closure of the entire complex.

“They’re winking in an out like bloody Christmas tree lights!” Connor announced. “I’m staying here. It’s the only way I’ll keep tabs on what’s going on. Make sure you all keep me posted.”

Ryan nodded and then set off at a run.

**Wookey Hole Caves, Somerset. 10.40am.**

“Mum, it moved!”

Carrie Treece ruffled her eight-year-old son’s hair. “They’re really lifelike! What’s than one called, Jay?”

“Phorusrhacos,” her son said with complete confidence. He probably even knew how to spell it, which was more than she did. “Terror Birds,” he added helpfully. “It did move, honest, mum!”

“Then we’d better get a photo,” Carrie said, pulling out her phone. Jay had been mad keen on the animatronic dinosaurs they’d seen last year at Bristol Zoo, so he was bound to want some pictures of these to show his friends.

The thing looked like a fat ostrich although with a much thicker neck and heavier head. The mostly grey body had short, stubby wings, topped with a paler neck and a head that ended in a wickedly curved beak, flushed with a bright band of red. It stood on pinkish, rather bandy legs, scaly and bare of feathers, like a chicken’s foot. One of the models was frozen in the act of bending down to tear at something on the ground, while one of the other two stood next to it, staring with beady eyes out across the path. The third model turned its head to look at her and opened its beak to let out a squawk that sounded like a constipated parrot.

Carrie jumped. She hadn’t expected it to make a noise even though the models at the zoo had come complete with sound, just like these, but it had still taken her by surprise.

They really were very life-like.

This would look great on Facebook.

**The Anomaly Research Centre. 10.42am.**

Stephen swung his gun cases in through the door of the Eurocopter.

He’d been to Wookey Hole as a kid, but could remember very little about the place. As they weren’t exactly off for a nice day in the countryside, he’d brought along his L96 sniper rifle, an M4 and one of the new EMP pistols they’d acquired courtesy of their French friends. The other members of the team were also armed with a combination of lethal and non-lethal weapons, and Abby was carrying a selection of conventional tranquilliser weapons, just in case.

Their pilot had already started up the engines and the rotor blades were spinning in the air. Stephen stowed his kit and strapped it down, then settled into one of the passenger seats. The onboard radio was already relaying a steady stream of information from Connor.

The security team was already on board, complete with their own weaponry, as were Cutter and Abby. They were just waiting for Claudia, who preferred to run her damage-limitation exercises on the spot, if at all possible. But to Stephen’s surprise, the next person on board was Lester. The man had changed out of his pin-striped suit into a pair of jeans smarter than any Stephen owned. The blue sweater looked like cashmere, and was probably worth more than the entire contents of Stephen’s wardrobe. He guessed that as their destination was close to where Lester and his brother had a cottage, their boss had deemed that he’d be able to bring more to the party by being on the ground, rather than staying back at base.

Lester was also an experienced caver, and they might need his specialist knowledge. It was just sod’s bloody law that Lyle and the rest of the lads weren’t available. Ryan certainly had no love of caves.

After Claudia climbed on board, Ryan conducted a quick head-count, then settled down in the seat next to Stephen, informing their pilot that they were ready to go.

“We’re on our way, ladies and gentlemen,” Walsh confirmed, as the Eurocopter rose smoothly into the air and very quickly attained a cruising speed of close to 180mph.

Stephen settled back in his seat to listen to Connor’s voice over the radio, describing how the anomalies appeared to be winking in and out of existence, appearing in one place for a few minutes and then disappearing again, only to pop up elsewhere a few moments later. It was clearly playing havoc with the ADD’s systems.

“Nothing’s ever bloody straightforward, is it?” he muttered to Ryan.

His lover shot him a rueful grin and rubbed the back of his hand against Stephen’s thigh. “At least we won’t get stuck in a traffic jam on the M4.”

**Anomaly Research Centre. 10.50am.**

Connor stared in frustration at the bank of screens in front of him.

It had become obvious very quickly that Google Earth wasn’t going to be much help as their satellite imagery had obviously been taken several years ago. The cave’s website referred to a 58 bedroom hotel on site, but there was no sign of that on the aerial imagery on Connor’s screens. A call to Lester on the helicopter had provided the information that the hotel was adjacent to the main car park, so based on that information Connor had quickly marked it on a copy of the map.

The sprawling site was bisected by the main road through the village, with the car parking to the south of the road. The cave complex extended a considerable distance north of the road, and seemed to consist of an extensive complex of large buildings that had once been a working paper mill. According to Lester, handmade paper was still produced there, but now as part of the various tourist attractions on the site.

From Connor’s point of view, the website was hopeless. The first thing he’d encountered was a large flashing banner heading declaring that the caves were open today, and then the ominous words ‘Dinosaur Mad’ had appeared. He didn’t think whoever had written that intended their advertising to be taken quite so literally! The website proudly proclaimed that the caves were the most spectacular in Britain and that they were home to the legendary Witch of Wookey. Unfortunately, they were home to a lot more than that at the moment and, from what Connor had been able to piece together, not all the dinosaur sightings had been of plastic models. He couldn’t work out the connection between a dinosaur theme park and a cave but, according to Lester, show cave managements seemed to like plastic dinosaurs, and so did the visitors, although after today, a few of them might well change their minds. But at least the dino park would help with any spin Claudia wanted to put on events and make it easier to discredit any inconvenient photos.

Connor had clicked on every heading on the website, but there was no map of the complex. He hadn’t even managed to work out where the actual entrance to the cave was until Lester had directed him to a website for something called the Mendip Cave Registry which marked entrances on a copy of the map. The valley was heavily wooded, but relatively steep-sided and so far none of the anomalies had opened up in the village. The cluster seemed to be confined to the area between the road and the cave, appearing along in a wooded strip up the valley.

As he stared at the screen, still trying to get his head around the layout of the extensive complex, the ADD flared briefly into life. Connor quickly shut off the sound as he waited for the latest position to appear on his map.

A moment later, a winking light flared into life, looking like it was somewhere in the middle of one of the mill buildings. It was little consolation when he realised that one of the lights in the valley had gone off at the same time, not when they had people pinned down in the buildings.

He turned on his comms unit. Time to break some bad news.


	2. Chapter 2

**Wookey Hole, Somerset. 11.15am.**

Looking out of the window, Lester watched as the Eurocopter few over the familiar landscape of the Mendip Hills, with its straight Roman roads, dark forestry commission plantations and patchwork quilt of fields surrounded by dry stone walls and expertly-laid hedges.

Exactly on schedule, the small village of Wookey Hole came into view as they crossed over the steep scarp of Ebbor Gorge on the south side of the long range of hills. The show cave complex was instantly recognisable, with its newly-built hotel and extensive car parks, all intended to capitalise on summer visitors and the numerous wedding parties in search of exotic locations,

From the information he’d gleaned from the harassed manager, there were no weddings booked in for today, but there was at least 50 visitors spread out through the complex, including one party trapped in the cave.

With anomalies appearing throughout the complex, the manager had done his best to get people inside what was hoped to be the safety of the buildings, but the rips in time were no respecters of property and one had already opened up inside the sprawling mill building that housed one of the country’s biggest collections of fairground memorabilia. Fortunately it had appeared inside a storage area and the staff had been able to keep it locked. No noises had as yet been heard from inside the locked room, and fortunately, all members of staff carried radio handsets to communicate with the main office, which was enabling Connor to keep an overview of what was happening.

The reports they’d received so far had been confused in the extreme, but as far as Connor had been able to ascertain, there were several creatures loose in the valley that linked the cave to the old paper mill. There had been casualties, but no one knew how many. Paramedics had been dispatched from Weston-super-Mare Hospital but were being held back by police until they could safely be escorted onto the site. Claudia had played the ‘escaped wild animal’ card again. The old favourites were always the best.

“Setting down in the car park,” Gareth Walsh announced.

“The manager’s waiting in the hotel,” Connor told them over the radio link. “The good news is that one of the anomalies outside the mill has closed. The bad news is that another one has just opened up inside it. I’m trying to get contact with one of the staff in there. The other interior one still sounds quiet but I’ve told them to stay well clear and not open any doors.”

A second anomaly in the buildings wasn’t exactly the sort of news Lester had been hoping for. With only an eight man security team, they were going to be stretched to breaking point on this job as it was, without even more complications.

Their pilot set the helicopter lightly down in an empty part of the car park close to the hotel. From the side window, Lester could see the manager waiting anxiously just inside the doorway. He’d known Daniel Medlar for some years. The man had good relations with cave divers and a few months ago, Lyle had even persuaded Lester to dust off his underwater kit and take a trip with him into the further reaches of the cave, accessible only through a series of flooded passages. It had been a good dive in excellent visibility, blissfully free of anything trying to eat him. He was already wondering if he was going to have to call in back-up from the Special Boat Service. They were based in Poole, but could be on site in less than two hours if needed. He’d assess the situation on the ground first before making a decision.

Ryan was first out of the helicopter, with Lester right behind him. While the soldiers were unloading their kit, Lester made his way straight to the hotel entrance.

He had a manager to deal with.

**Wookey Hole, Somerset. 11.24am.**

With an EMP in his hands and a tranquilliser rifle slung over his back, Stephen ran across the road towards the main part of the site, with Sergeant Sean Burns at his side.

Burns was a tough, laconic individual with a dry sense of humour whose time on the anomaly project had mainly been spent riding shot-gun on expeditions through the permanently-open anomaly at Farnley Hall. As a result, he had a good understanding of the different types of creature they might encounter, and he’d proved himself a quick learner. Stephen liked working with him. The man had a level head and an open mind. He knew to assess any threat before opening fire, and hadn’t needed telling twice that their mission was to return as many creatures as possible to their own time, alive and unharmed.

The four man team Stephen was working with consisted of Burns, Fizz and Barrett, the only member of Stringer’s team they’d been able to hold onto when the rest had been whisked off to reinforce the Counter-Terrorist Unit. The fourth member of the team was one of Mason’s mercenaries, Tony Keegan. Like Burns, he’d had plenty of experience beyond the anomalies and from what Stephen knew of him, the man was sound, despite a somewhat chequered past.

“Bloody brilliant!” Keegan commented, as they ran towards something sign-posted Pirate Island. “My sister’s kids would love that.”

As far as Stephen could see, Pirate Island was an elaborate crazy golf course, with a large wooden pirate ship as its centrepiece, surrounded by ponds, bridges and walkways.

He signalled a halt for a moment as he consulted his hand-held ADD. “Clear,” he said, then started running again.

It was the job of Stephen’s team to neutralise as many creatures as they could in the open air and get any tourists caught outside to safety while Ryan’s team, with Cutter and Abby, started to deal with whatever was happening inside the buildings. According to the information Connor was relaying to them over the radio, there were reports of casualties outside but there was no way they could risk bringing in medics until they were reasonably certain any threats had been eliminated.

The path they were following took them past a deserted tearoom, tables and chairs turned over in what had clearly been a rush for the exit. It was lucky the anomalies had appeared early, before too many people had flocked to what was obviously a popular attraction. The cave complex had only opened half an hour before the first anomaly had appeared. The scale of the problem would have been much worse if the same thing had happened in the middle of the afternoon.

Following the directions Connor was providing, they made their way past the mill buildings and down into the valley beyond.

Stephen came to a halt, staring at the arse of the largest gorilla he’d ever seen. The creature was facing up the valley and must have stood at least five metres high at the shoulder, with four legs the size of tree-trunks holding up a massive body.

“Fucking hell, he’s a big sod,” Barrett muttered, shifting the setting on his EMP as high as it would go.

**Wookey Hole Hotel, Somerset. 11.25am**

“I’m sorry, Daniel. There’s a limit to what I can tell you,” Lester said apologetically.

To his credit, the young manager hadn’t bombarded him with questions. He’d just provided as much information as he could, calmly and concisely. He hadn’t even whinged about the loss of business, unlike some managers and owners that the response teams had encountered.

Medlar had done a good job coordinating radio traffic with his staff and as a result, they now had a reasonable idea where most of the tourists were. They were spread between the cave, valley and paper mill complex. A party of 10 adults and four children were currently stuck in the cave. They’d been just about to emerge into the valley when the warning about problems in the valley had come over their guide’s radio only moments after Lester had first spoken to Medlar. On Lester’s advice, they’d been told to stay in the cave. He just hoped that proved to be the right decision.

Not for the first time in the past hour, he cursed the fact that he had no fucking idea where Lyle and his team were or when they’d be back. Anomalies had a nasty habit of being attracted to caves and mines, and they were still no nearer to understanding why.

**Wookey Hole, Somerset. Paper Mill Complex. 11.35am.**

Ryan threw the door open and quickly scanned the room for threats.

Nothing was immediately apparent, although the huddle of apprehensive tourists in the far corner looked shocked at the sudden entrance of several men dressed in black, bristling with weapons.

Someone screamed.

A woman wearing a Wookey Hole sweatshirt with a design of a witch riding a broomstick stepped forward, a radio in her hand. The badge she was wearing said her name was Suzie. She wasn’t much taller than Abby, but she was stockier in build with a shock of spiky pink hair that made her look like a brightly-coloured hedgehog.

“Can you get us out of here?” she demanded. “We’ve got a pregnant woman who’s started having stomach cramps that might be contractions and an asthmatic 11-year-old who’s having a panic attack.”

“How many people are in the building?” Ryan asked, ignoring her question until he had more information on which to base a decision.

“There were 20 people on the first tour at 10 o’clock,” she told him. “They would have come out into the park at about 11. Then another two tours, one mostly outside by the time it kicked off, plus the one still in the cave. A lot of them were still out in the dino park when…” she hesitated, unsure how to continue.

“When the animal attack happened.” Cutter supplied helpfully.

She nodded. “Yes. Daniel told us to get as many people into the buildings here as we could, and then lock ourselves in. I… I saw some things… they looked like bloody great big ostriches…”

“Genetic engineering,” Cutter said. “Totally illegal. That’s why we’re here, lass.”

“How many?” Ryan repeated.

Suzie shrugged. “Eight people in here and I think there’s a few more in other parts of the building. I tried to keep people together but it wasn’t easy.”

Abby held out the hand-held anomaly detection device to Ryan. He glanced down at the screen. The nearest anomaly was only about 100 metres away.

“Connor, how many are open now?” he demanded, speaking into his throat mic.

“They’re coming and going,” Connor said. “The one nearest to you has been open for five minutes. We’ve got two open in the valley at the moment, all north of the road where you are.”

Ryan was going to have to take a quick decision whether to evacuate this group or leave them here. The pregnant woman had her arms wrapped around her stomach and it only took a glance to tell him that she was in pain. The man next to her looked almost as worried as she did. Next to them was a woman in her 30s with an arm around a skinny kid who was taking deep breaths from an inhaler held to his mouth. Their entrance had clearly shocked the group into silence, but that wasn’t going to last.

“Dane, get this lot out of here.” He couldn’t risk another anomaly opening nearby if he left them behind. “Hellier, you’re riding shotgun.”

The former mercenary nodded. Ryan didn’t know the man well, but what he’d seen of him in action had been reassuring.

“Connor, are you listening?” When he heard Connor’s ‘yes’ Ryan added, “Tell Lester I’ve got nine people coming out. Two of them are going to need medical attention.”

“Eight,” the pink-haired girl said, standing in front of him with her hands planted squarely on her hips. “This place is a rabbit-warren. You’re going to need someone who knows their way around.”

“Change of plan, Connor, make that eight,” Ryan said. “One of the guides is staying with us.” She was right. He’d seen the size of this part on the complex on the Google earth shots. The blurb on the website he’d looked at on the plane had referred to various different attractions and he could easily lose valuable time trying to find his way around.

Suzie looked up at him in momentary surprise then switched her attention to Abby and said, “I thought he was going to argue with me.”

Abby grinned at her. “He can be quite sensible – for a bloke.”

Ryan resisted the urge to execute a Lester-style eye-roll. “Show her the detector. We need to know where to go next.”

Abby held the screen in front of Suzie. “Can you work out where that is?”

She looked at it and grimaced. “Yes, and you’re not going to like it.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Wookey Hole, Somerset. 11.27am.**

Calling the gorilla a big sod was probably the understatement of the year. To put it mildly, it was fucking huge.

Fortunately, it was also plastic.

Stephen looked around the valley in amazement. There were dinosaurs everywhere. A stegosaurus was calmly cropping the grass on the side of the valley. Opposite that, a group of phorusrachus were frozen in the act of feeding, whilst further away, a life-sized tyrannosaurus rex loomed above everything, fortunately unmoving. Stephen quickly raked his eyes over the scene, scanning automatically for threats, trying to distinguish reality from cleverly constructed fiction. Apart from the massively over-sized gorilla, a lot of the exhibits were surprisingly realistic from a distance.

A sudden flurry of movement caught Stephen’s eye, but before he could bring his EMP to bear, Barrett had calmly dropped to one knee and fired his own weapon. The powerful electrical charge hit an adult phorusrachus, halting it in its tracks. Its eyes rolled back and it fell to the ground, stubby, flightless wings flapping for a moment as it struggled against what had clearly been a knock-out charge. Barratt had smoothly dialled back from maximum charge before taking the shot, but even so, he’d still hit it with a hefty whack. Moments later, the bird lay still.

Keegan ran forward without needing to be told and started to strap its legs together. Even when the bird came around, it wouldn’t be going anywhere in a hurry.

“Nice shooting,” Burns said. “Christ, those fucking models are lifelike. They had me fooled.”

“Just be glad King Kong’s plastic,” Stephen said, slapping his hand on the massive model.

“Yeah, small mercies,” Burns agreed.

“Anomaly’s over there, Stephen,” Fizz called, pointing with the barrel of his weapon to a glittering ball of light further up the valley, almost hidden in a small copse of trees.

Stephen nodded. He was going to need to check the area for tracks. If one terror bird had come through, there was a good chance there’d be others. They were known for hunting in flocks. And with multiple anomalies winking into and out of existence, he had no idea what else they might end up facing. He just hoped nothing measured up to the gorilla or the T. rex in size.

A sudden cry stopped Stephen in his tracks. He wheeled around, looking for the source of the noise. A small boy peeped out from behind the leg of a beak-nosed plastic triceratops. There was a smear of blood on his face and he looked terrified.

“My mum won’t wake up!” the child said plaintively.

Confident that the soldiers were covering his back, Stephen ran over to the life-sized model of what was probably one of the most easily recognised dinosaurs in the world. Fizz matched him step for step. In Ditzy’s absence, the young soldier was their best field medic.

A woman who looked to be in her late 20s was lying on the ground behind the plastic triceratops. Fizz quickly started to feel for a pulse. After a moment, he nodded, and started to make a more thorough examination. Stephen could see blood in her hair, but there were no obvious injuries elsewhere that he could see.

“What happened?” Stephen asked gently, one arm around the frightened little boy.

“The phorusrachus jumped at us,” the boy said, not even stumbling over the name. “We ran away then Mum fell and hit her head.”

“And then it left you alone?” Stephen said. Terror birds weren’t known for passing up easy prey.

“No. An allosaurus chased it.”

Stephen exchanged glances with Fizz. This really wasn’t turning out to be their day. They needed to evacuate the unconscious woman and the boy, but to do that they’d be almost halving the operational capacity of their team.

He spoke quickly into his radio mike. “Connor, get me one of those ambulances to the road between the car park and the track up to the caves. We need as casevac now. Unconscious woman, plus unharmed kid. Tell the crew to get them on board and get the hell out of here and not stop. Over.”

“On to it,” Connor confirmed.

“Can she be carried over someone’s shoulder?” Stephen demanded.

Fizz shrugged. “Not exactly ideal with a head injury, but we need to get her out of here and it’ll be faster than getting the paramedics in here.”

Stephen nodded and called out to Tony Keegan. The mercenary was thick-set, with arms like tree trunks. Stephen had no doubt that he could carry the injured woman and still run.

Fizz hoisted the boy up onto his back. “Hang on, mate, we’re going for a ride,” he said cheerfully.

Keegan lifted the woman into his arms and settled her head against his shoulder. Stephen was impressed. It took a lot of strength to carry an inert body like that, but it would be kinder to her than the fireman’s lift method.

“Get back in here as quickly as you can,” Stephen said.

Fizz nodded. “You can count on us, boss.”

Stephen nodded. He just hoped they would manage to get the child and his mother to safety.

**Wookey Hole, Somerset, Paper Mill Complex. 11.40am.**

“It’s somewhere in there,” Suzie said.

She was pointing at the exit from the mirror maze.

Ryan could see reflected light bouncing off the surface of the glass and he could feel the slight tug of magnetism on the EMP weapon in his hands. The anomaly was in the mirror maze and they had no idea if anything had come through, so staying on the outside wasn’t an option. He didn’t have enough men left to cordon this one off, so they were going to have to do this the hard way and make a sweep.

He looked at Suzie. “There’s another way around this?”

She nodded.

“Good. Take Abby and Cutter that way and I’ll meet you on the other side. Fiver, cover them.”

“Boss?”

“That’s bloody stupid, man!” Cutter broke in, looking anything but happy at Ryan’s order. “You’ve got no idea what’s in there.”

“I know. But two of us dressed in black going in there is equally fucking stupid. I won’t know if I’m looking at my own reflection or not. Too risky if I need to shoot.”

“Never been mistaken for a white bloke before,” Fiver said with a grin.

“I’m not taking the risk. Stay out unless I yell for you.” Ryan swung the EMP off his shoulder and handed it to Abby. “I’ve got no idea how that’ll work in a confined space surrounded by glass and I don’t want to find out the hard way.”

Without waiting for any more comment, he flicked his M4 onto single shot and stepped into the maze.

All around him, black-clad figures moved as one, some looking like him, others grotesquely distorted: some tall and thin, others massively fat. Ryan moved as quickly as he could, but there were dead ends everywhere, and the light from the anomaly flickering brightly off multiple surfaces didn’t help his sense of orientation.

He followed the twists and turns of the maze, soon losing any sense of direction, but he could tell from the increasing magnetic pull on the weapon in his hands that he was getting closer to the source of at least one of their problems.

When he finally caught sight of the anomaly itself, it was hard not to screw his eyes up against the light. It was like being in the middle of a massive diamond. Light twisting and turning everywhere, surrounding and enveloping him, wrapping him in endless, coruscating shards of time, stretching into infinity in the mirrors, threatening to overload his brain’s ability to process what he was seeing and experiencing.

A sudden shriek echoed all around him.

Ryan whirled to face what he thought was the source of the noise.

A strong beak struck at him…

Ryan flung himself sideways and fired a single shot. Glass shattered around him. A heavy head drew back and then darted at him again, beak open, a red tongue waving at him. Ryan rolled, feeling glass crunch underneath him. Distorted by the mirrors, the creature seemed to have a neck like a giraffe on top of an unnaturally short-legged body. He had no fucking idea what it was, but whatever it was, it wasn’t friendly.

He fired again. More glass shattered.

Something struck him hard on the back, knocking him forward into one of the glass walls. Ryan caught sight of sluggish trickle of blood on his cheek and realised he must have been hit by a flying shard of glass. He resisted the impulse to wipe the blood away just in case there was some glass lodged in the wound.

The sound of raucous shrieking echoed all around him as the light of the anomaly glittered on a million shards of glass.

As he pushed himself off the wall, Ryan saw creatures coming at him from all sides, beaks open wide, ready to strike.

Automatic fire would result in him being cut to ribbons by flying glass.

He had a split-second to decide what was real and what was a reflection.

As his finger squeezed the trigger, Ryan just hoped he’d chosen the correct target.

**Wookey Hole, Somerset, Dinosaur Park. 11.45am.**

With his EMP rifle held to his shoulder, Stephen advanced cautiously through the dinosaur park with Jamie Barrett covering his back.

They’d taken down a second terror bird and left it trussed up like the first one.

The anomaly they’d had eyes on a few minutes ago had just winked out of existence, but that hadn’t been much consolation, as Connor had immediately reported that another had appeared in the valley.

“Over there!” he said, pointing with his rifle at a sudden flash of white in the bushes.

They’d never come across as cluster as unstable as this before. The anomalies were winking in and out of existence like a set of flashing Christmas tree lights. At this rate, they were going to have a fuck of a lot of creatures in transit to Farnley Hall at the end of the day. But it was better than sending a heap of corpses to the dissection labs.

The anomaly promptly started to shimmer the way they did when something was about to come through.

“Veggie or meat-o-saurus?” Barrett said, just as a beaked nose topped with three distinctive horns started to appear.

“Veggie,” Stephen said. “Leave this one to me.”

A moment later, a juvenile triceratops found itself nose to nose with a much bigger replica of itself. The small creature stared up at something that was probably about the same size as the adults in its herd. It tilted its head on one side, quizzically, making Stephen wish he had time to take a photo. Connor would have loved this.

The baby butted its nose against that of the model and let out a surprisingly high-pitched mewling sound. It took a step backwards, raising Stephen’s hopes that it was about to turn around and go straight home again. That hope was dashed almost immediately when it mewled again and butted the model harder like an overgrown kitten trying to get its mother’s attention.

Stephen swung his EMP over his shoulder and unholstered the much smaller pistol strapped to his left thigh. Dialling the weapon down to its lowest setting, he stopped forward and fired.

He hoped the electrical charge would be no worse than a dose of pins and needles to the thick-skinned dinosaur. He didn’t want to panic it, just nudge it back in the direction of its own time.

The triceratops threw its head up and mewled again.

Stephen handed the pistol to Barrett and spread his arms as widely as he could, taking a step forwards in an attempt to herd the baby backwards. “Give him another dose,” he instructed.

Barrett aimed and fired.

The strange sensation coupled with the even stranger sight of an unfamiliar creature advancing on it had the desired effect. The baby triceratops turned and fled, fortunately before its mother had come looking for it.

Barrett pulled something out of a pocket of his tac vest and stepped forward.

For a brief moment, Stephen thought the soldier was about to lob a grenade through the anomaly and opened his mouth to protest when he realised that Barrett was actually holding a smoke bomb.

“Chuck it,” Stephen said. “The rate these are opening and closing, we can’t risk going through.

Barrett nodded and pulled the pin, lobbing the grenade neatly through the middle of the anomaly. It would produce a wall of smoke in three seconds, more than enough to keep even the most curious of creatures from succumbing to the siren attraction of the rip in time.

One down. Several more to go.


	4. Chapter 4

**Wookey Hole, Somerset, Paper Mill Complex, Mirror Maze. 11.45am.**

As the bullet struck the terror bird in the head, Ryan dived sideways, trying to get out of the way of its sharp beak.

As his shoulder hit the floor, he rolled on his back and fired a second round.

The huge bird rocked on its legs, took one step forward and then, as if in slow motion, started to collapse. It landed on the wooden floor with a heavy thud and the sharp snap of breaking glass. More shards fell around them.

“Ryan!” Cutter’s voice echoed through the cavernous space occupied by the mirror maze.

“I’m OK!” Ryan yelled back. “Keep back!”

He came to his feet amidst another crunch of broken glass. The coruscating light of the anomaly bathed the scene in unnaturally bright light. The blood leaking from the dead terror bird’s head was pooling in the shards on the floor and was also splashed in a red mist over the chunks of glass that remained in their frames. It was impossible to tell if anything else had come through the anomaly, but with the glass spread everywhere on the floor, Ryan thought it was unlikely that another bird would want to join the party. As a precaution, he used the butt of his M4 carbine to smash some more glass so that the whole area around the anomaly crunched underneath his boots. With no spare men to form a cordon, he was just going to have to improvise.

When he was satisfied that he’d made the whole area as unpleasant as possible to walk on, he made his way out of the maze, resisting the impulse to smash a few more mirrors for good measure. He’d hated this sort of thing even as a kid, disliking the grotesque figures that grimaced back at him from all sides.

Cutter, Abby, Fiver and Suzie, the pink-haired cave guide, were waiting for him when he emerged.

Abby took one look at his face and promptly fished a large handkerchief out of a pocket and went up on her toes to dab carefully at the mess on his cheek. It hurt, but there was no sharp pain that would indicate any slivers of glass stuck in him.

“What was it?” Cutter asked, showing no disapproval that Ryan had used live rounds. The man was now far more pragmatic about things than he once was.

“Unfriendly,” Ryan said, then speaking into his radio mic, he added, “Connor, what’s going on elsewhere? I’ve just taken down a terror bird.”

“There’re two outside, as well,” Connor told him over the radio link. “Trussed up like Christmas turkeys. Looks like the anomaly they came through has closed. Stephen’s just chased a baby triceratops back home, but the bad news is that one of the kids they’ve just evacuated swears blind there’s an allosaurus loose out there.”

Ryan grimaced. This wasn’t the first time they’d come across a dinosaur-mad kid who could give their own experts a run for their money when it came to species identification.

Abby looked down at her hand-held ADD and frowned. “Connor, I think I’m picking up something else in here…”

“Yep, another one’s just appeared.”

“On our way,” Ryan acknowledged.

The mill complex contained a series of rooms devoted to different attractions. They passed through an enormous penny arcade, with more old fairground machines than he’d ever seen before, harking back to the days of seaside holidays with his gran, although some of these looked a lot older than the ones he’d enjoyed playing on as a kid. Lights were flashing everywhere and a couple of clowns grinned inanely at them as they went by. He resisted the urge to take them down with a three-round bust. Clowns should be banned under the Geneva Convention.

A message relayed to them by Connor sent them on a detour into a small museum of caving exhibits where they found two more members of staff holed up with four visitors. With an open anomaly at their back, Ryan wanted them out of the building. Luckily, a moment later he received radio confirmation that Dane and Hellier had got their group to safety and were on their way back in, which made things easier. They could carry on doing escort duty. The more civilians they got out of harm’s way, the better.

They found the next anomaly in the middle of the paper mill. It was swirling in the air in the middle of room, surrounded by large vats awash with some sort of lumpy white liquid.

Suzie stared at the anomaly and muttered, “Bloody hell, don’t let the boss see that or he’ll want to keep it.”

“Not a good idea,” Abby said. “Trust me, they might be pretty, but they’re more trouble than they’re worth.”

“What’s that stuff?” Ryan demanded, pointing at the vats.

“Cotton steeping in water. We use it for paper-making,” Suzie told him.

“OK, I want the whole lot on the floor,” Ryan said.

That earned him some strange looks, but no one argued. When the wooden floor was swimming in sodden white cotton fibres, they retreated to the doorway.

Cutter threw him a quizzical glance.

“If anything comes through, it’ll make it easy to track,” he said.

At exactly that moment, something came running through the anomaly and promptly skidded on the wet floor, heading straight for them. Ryan swung his EMP up but was stopped by a sharp command from Abby. In deference to their animal expert, Ryan held his fire.

The incoming creature looked like an extremely ugly, brindled piglet. It let our a squeal of surprise as its four trotters all promptly went in separate directions, leaving it skidding on its belly straight towards Abby, who promptly grabbed it, turned it around and bowled it straight back through the anomaly with a powerful underarm throw. Ryan made a mental note never to go up against her in a game of cricket.

With another indignant squeal, the piglet disappeared back to its own time.

Thirty seconds later, the anomaly snapped shut.

Abby and Suzie promptly high-fived each other.

“Where next, Conn?” Ryan said.

“Outside,” Connor told him. “We’ve got anomalies opening and closing everywhere.”

**Anomaly Research Centre. 11.50am.**

Connor watched as the flashing lights that indicated anomalies winked on and off around the valley, some opening and closing again in a matter of seconds, others staying open for longer, but none of them could be described as stable. Fortunately most were too transitory for anything to come through, but the constant comings and goings were almost impossible to keep track of.

At his side, Raj was doing his best to keep a tally of what creatures had been seen, but building any sort of coherent picture of what time periods they might be dealing with was tantamount to impossible. The anomalies seemed to be coming from random, unconnected periods of time: Cenozoic in the case of the terror birds and Cretaceous for the triceratops, and now some sort of ugly piglet, which might – or might not – have been a young entelodont. When he’d mentioned that thought, Ryan hadn’t sounded a happy bunny. But Connor was more worried about the prospect of an allosaurus loose in the valley.

The description the kid had given him over the phone had been detailed and accurate, despite the fact that the poor little bugger had been scared stiff, and Connor had no doubt that his identification had been correct. They were nasty buggers, the apex killer of their time. An ambush predator with excellent eye-sight and a finely-honed ability to remain motionless in undergrowth waiting to pounce on anything it considered prey. They were smart and very, very dangerous.

So far, all the anomalies had appeared in the valley of the River Axe, which left the cave at the base of the cliff. Connor spent quite a few night shifts in the rec room with Lyle, theorising about why they’d encountered so many anomalies in regions riddled by caves and mines, but coming no closer to accounting for their occurrence. Highly mineralised rock acting as some sort of lodestone for the magnetic fields exerted by the unpredictable rips in time was one possibility, but not one he was any closer to understanding.

With the concentration of anomalies in the valley, Connor was getting increasingly concerned about the party trapped in the cave. If an anomaly had appeared in there, they were going to be sitting ducks. But with the chaotic situation outside, it wasn’t going to be easy to spare someone for a recce.

Connor took a deep breath and called Lester’s mobile.

**Wookey Hole, Somerset. Dinosaur Park. 11.55am.**

Abby stayed close to Suzie as they ran as fast as they could to join Sean Burns’ team. Having a civilian with them wasn’t ideal, but they needed the woman’s knowledge of the layout of the theme park. She’d already saved them precious time inside the sprawling complex of attractions in the old mill building.

Connor was doing his best to direct them, but he was hampered by grossly out of date satellite imagery and the absence of any layout indication on the website. From what he’d been able to tell them, they had anomalies going to at least three different time periods. The terror birds had been brought down by the EMPs and would need a hit of tranquilliser to keep them down but Connor was concerned that they had an allosaurus loose in the valley, maybe more than one. He was also worried about the tourists trapped in the cave. This was not turning into an easy op to coordinate.

Ryan promptly demanded a sit-rep off Sergeant Burns while Abby busied herself with filling a syringe with something to knock out the trussed-up phorusrachus for the next couple of hours so they didn’t hurt themselves in transit to Farnley Hall. The terror birds they’d inherited from Ed Mason’s operation had been repatriated through an anomaly to their own time, vacating their holding pens, so at least they’d have somewhere to put these ones until they could get them home.

Suzie stared down at the birds and murmured, “Bloody hell!”

Abby shot her a quick grin. “Yeah, that about sums it up. Your models are pretty good. Better than a lot we’ve seen.”

“Daniel likes to get things right. Apart from the size of the gorilla.”

“Wouldn’t want to meet him on a dark night,” Abby agreed.

“Or that thing,” Suzie said, staring down at the enormous flightless birds.

Abby found a vein on a thick leg and administered the drug. It was enough to keep the creature under for a couple of hours, but she was going t have to travel with the animal transporters when they arrived. She gave a shot to the second one as well. They wouldn’t want these guys waking up in the back of a truck half way to Kent.

“Keep looking around,” Abby told Suzie. “If you see anything that isn’t one of your models, we need to know about it.”

Suzie nodded.

Once the two phorusrachos had been safely immobilised, Abby went back to her place at Cutter’s side and, flanked by the security teams, they made their way cautiously up the wide valley bottom. On their right, a mill race channelled water away from the main river and directed it down to where a large wheel powered the paper-making machinery. On the other side, an over-grown slope led up to what looked like a wide cave entrance on the hillside.

“A small cave. Hyaena Den,” Suzie supplied. “It doesn’t go back very far.”

According to Connor, an anomaly had appeared somewhere in that area, but there was now so much magnetic activity in the valley that getting a fix on anything on the hand-held detectors was proving impossible and she could see anything in the heavy undergrowth on that side of the valley. Abby turned away, still scanning the valley for threats.

Suzie drew in a sharp intake of breath. “Abby, look in the bushes to the side of the cave, I’m sure I saw something move,”

“Possible sighting,” Abby said into her radio mic. “Slope on the right. Investigation needed.”

Jamie Barrett and Pete Hellier peeled off from the group and were about to jump the narrow canal when a flash of movement in the bushes turned into a positive swarm of small creatures rushing down the slope. They were bipedal, standing no more than a metre high at the hip, with large eyes et in a relatively small head. A long tail was held off the ground as the creatures ran in a series of elegant bounds down the slope, clearing the canal in an easy jump.

“No live rounds!” Cutter yelled almost immediately. “Herbivores!”

Barrett reacted quickly, knocking one out with a charge from his EMP. Keegan was equally quick, but his was hit just as it was about to leap over the water and the creature fell short, twitching as it hit the water and promptly sank.

“Oh shit!” Abby broke into a run, heading for the mill race.

The water looked no more than chest deep on her and she could clearly see coins on the bottom thrown in by tourists. The small dinosaur was lying motionless on the bottom. Abby tossed her tranquilliser rifle and EMP pistol to Suzie and quickly slipped off the utility belt in which she carried her spare darts and other kit, then without hesitation, she jumped in the water and ducked down to grab the stricken creature. It was heavy, but the buoyancy lent by the water helped and she was able to heave its head out of the water and start to haul it back to the bank.

With a look of total amazement on her face, Suzie reached down to help and together they managed to manoeuvre the dinosaur out onto the grass. It coughed up a small amount of water but seemed to be still breathing, despite the electric shock it had received and its sudden immersion in cold water.

Around her, the others were doing their best to neutralise the rest of the group without causing injury. As she checked on her own charge, she was aware of three more dropping to the ground, twitching but hopefully unharmed. It spoke volumes for the professionalism of the team that Cutter’s order had been obeyed without question, despite the amount of firepower being carried by every one of them. Each man had trusted Cutter’s identification and acted accordingly. She had no idea what the small dinosaur was, but quickly took a photograph on her mobile phone and emailed it back to Connor for identification.

Something about the way the group had hurtled down the slope had been nagging at the edge of her consciousness, but she’d been more focussed on getting the herbivore out of the water than anything else. As the thought crystallised in her mind, Abby ignored what was going on around her and looked back up the slope.

She was just in time to see something much larger emerge from the bushes. The newcomer stood nearly two metres high at the shoulder. Powerful hind legs propelled it down the slope as Abby yelled a warning as loudly as she could.

The herbivores had been fleeing from a predator.


	5. Chapter 5

**Wookey Hole Hotel, Wookey Hole, Somerset. 12.02pm**

“Another ambulance is on its way in case we need it, ma’am.” DS Jane Burrows had been on the scene for the past half hour and had quickly proved to be exactly the sort of unflappable back-up that Claudia always dreamed of and never seemed to get, but today had proved to be an exception.

“Thanks. Let’s hope we don’t.” The unconscious woman had been taken off to Weston-Super-Mare Hospital, with one of the staff from the cave following behind with her young son, but not before she’d put the lad through to Connor and let him describe everything he’d seen in the valley.

According to Connor, the lad had perfectly described what Connor referred to as a dwarf allosaur. He’d sounded even more excited than usual when he’d been relaying this to her. Apparently the existence of such things was controversial, but Connor had sounded certain, telling her that it was an early Cretaceous descendent of the much larger allosaurus from the Jurassic. Claudia wondered if it made her a bad person that her first thought had been to wonder how easy the wretched things were to kill if Ryan had to give the order to use live fire.

There were times when her job didn’t lend itself to being an animal lover.

She was clinging to the escaped zoo animal story by the skin of her teeth, but apart from a few searching looks, DS Burrows had allowed her to maintain the fiction. Three other officers on the scene had been given strict instructions to keep any bystanders away from the immediate area and to make sure that the press got nowhere near them. She’d promised a press conference later in the local pub, which she hoped would be enough to keep them quiet for now, and fortunately, the anomalies had confined themselves to the mill buildings and the valley, so even long-distance lenses wouldn’t be able to pick anything up, and the presence of a dinosaur theme park was something she was going to shamelessly exploit.

Her mobile phone buzzed in her hand and she saw Lester walking out of the hotel entrance on the far side of the car park, his own phone to his ear.

“Claudia, I need to take a team into the cave,” he announced without preamble. “Connor’s worried that an anomaly might have appeared in there, as well. The bloody things seem to have an affinity for caves.”

“Be careful, James,” she told him.

The second she cut that call, her phone buzzed again and Connor came through, his voice radiating concern. “Another one’s appeared in the valley.”

**Wookey Hole, Dinosaur Park. 12.04pm**

Nick watched in horror as the predator sprang across the canal and bowled Tony Keegan off his feet. With prey fleeing in all directions, the newcomer seemed momentarily confused, but then opened its powerful jaws and started tearing at the man on the ground.

Stephen and Fiver were the closest to the attack and reacted quickly, but not before the predator had ripped at Keegan’s leg, shredding his black uniform trousers and ripping his flesh. The shots from the EMP’s made it jerk and twitch, but it didn’t slacken its hold. Nick cursed his own lack of a weapon, but although he was resigned to their use by others, he never been able to accustom himself to carrying a gun.

Keegan screamed, thrashing on the short grass in an attempt to get away, but his attacker held on tight, and seemed to have withstood the simultaneous shocks to its nervous system. Some of the creatures they dealt with seemed able to shrug off surprisingly high levels of charge and it was sod’s law that this was proving to be one of them.

The attack had been shocking in its suddenness and ferocity.

A yell from Stephen alerted them to another threat and Nick saw another of the creatures coming at them down the path through the dinosaur part. Leaving the security team to deal with that, he launched himself at the creature that was worrying at Keegan’s leg like a dog at a bone, and used the only weapon he was carrying: his fists.

He caught the dinosaur a ringing right hook on the side of its head.

“Stand clear, Prof!” Barrett yelled.

Nick jumped back as they hit Keegan’s attacker with an even stronger electric charge. The dinosaur released its hold on the man and let out a loud bark. Nick promptly punched it again, knocking it away from Keegan as he heard Abby, phone in hand, telling Claudia that they had a man down and needed an emergency casualty evacuation by helicopter. From the look of the mess the predator had left behind, Keegan would need urgent medical treatment, and quickly.

Their pink-haired cave guide promptly pulled off her fleece jacket and used it to wrap around Keegan’s leg, keeping pressure on the worst of the wounds. The man screamed, but stayed conscious.

Nick had seen enough serious injuries to know that was a good thing. And in a situation like this, he’d happily take any hope that was on offer.

**Wookey Hole, Somerset. 12.20pm.**

With Sean Burns remaining behind in command of the containment operation in the valley, Stephen followed Lester and Ryan ran up the narrow path at the side of the valley, heading for the entrance to the show-cave.

They’d had no contact from the group stranded in the cave and, with the rest of the visitors having been evacuated from the valley, the ones in the cave had to be the next priority. Anomalies were still opening and closing in the valley and they’d had to leave the rest of the military contingent behind to ensure that nothing was able to break out of the loose cordon they’d been able to establish.

Tony Keegan was now en route to Weston-super-Mare Hospital in the helicopter. The dwarf allosaur that had torn into his leg was now securely trussed up and incapable of doing any more damage and they’d been able to bring down most of the fleeing herbivores, which were now being carried to a hastily-emptied outbuilding awaiting transport as Connor had declared the anomalies to be far too unstable for any repatriations to be attempted.

Lester’s suggestion that Ryan remained in command in the open air had been met by a withering glance that would have sent even the bravest of his men scuttling for cover. As Ryan had pointed out, he might loathe caves, but he had more experience in them than Burns, so it made sense for the sergeant to stay outside, and that had been the end of the discussion. In return, Ryan hadn’t even attempted to dissuade Lester from accompanying them. Their boss knew the cave system well, having dived there with his brother and Lyle on numerous occasions. On top of that, he could handle both the SIG Sauer P226 strapped to his right thigh and the EMP cradled in his arms like a sleeping baby. No one on the team who’d seen Lester practising on the ARC’s underground shooting range would ever dare question his competence with either weapon.

The path ended in a heavy metal door just beyond a small wooden building. Lester ducked inside and used one of the guide’s radios to call the manager to tell him they were going into the cave then he hauled open the door and they went inside. The lights in the cave were on but, as a precaution, they turned on the EMP’s torch attachments as well. Ryan had reverted to using his M4 assault rifle, which also carried a powerful torch.

The inside of the cave was roomy but, even so, Stephen knew that Ryan would be clamping down hard on the bad memories that being underground always brought back. Lester promptly took the lead, and they followed him down a set of steps. The floor was slippery and uneven in places and they had to watch their footing as they clattered down the steps. At the bottom, Lester came to an abrupt halt, and tilted his head to one side, listening.

For a long moment there was silence, and then a loud scream ricocheted through the cave, the echoes bouncing off the walls like a rubber bullet in a confined space.

The three of them promptly broke into a run.

**Wookey Hole, Somerset. 12.26pm**

Keeping his footing on the wet concrete path wasn’t easy, but the noises coming from up ahead didn’t exactly lend themselves to maintaining a sedate pace.

Stephen could hear a combination of yelling and screaming and wondered how far aware they were from the group.

“Wait!” The note of command in Lester’s voice stopped both of them in their tracks. “You need to know what’s up ahead.”

He was right. They both came to a halt in the middle of a tall, dimly lit chamber. On their left was a large, thick stalagmite that he recognised from various posters he’d seen around the complex. The famous Witch of Wookey Hole was illuminated by a rather sickly green glow from nearby lamps. Stephen supposed that with the eye of faith, you might be able to make out the beak-nosed profile of an old woman glaring at them.

“You need to be careful from now on,” Lester told them. “The path narrows and the roof lowers. There’s a section where you’ll have to stoop. On the other side you come out into a large chamber with a sump pool on the far side and a flat, hard mud floor that slopes gradually down to the water. I think that chamber’s where the noise is coming from.”

“What the way on from there like?” Ryan asked.

“Up a set of steps and along a metal walkway in a tall, narrow rift. That continues through a couple of chambers and then you leave the cave via an artificial tunnel that comes out in the side of the valley.”

“So why come back to here?” Stephen said. “Why not wait there?”

“There’s a hell of a draught in the mined tunnel,” Lester replied. “Chamber Three, where the noise is coming from, is the most obvious place to wait.”

“Let’s see what’s going on,” Ryan said, taking point, his rifle held in readiness for whatever they might encounter.

Negotiating the low section at speed wasn’t easy, and Stephen narrowly avoided running into a sign advising him to mind his head, but as soon as the roof stated to rise, he could see what was causing consternation for the huddle of tourists pressed against the left-hand side of the chamber. An anomaly had appeared to their right, in front of the steps Lester had described, effectively cutting off their route out of the chamber in that direction.

Stephen quickly scanned the chamber for any threats. As far as he could see, nothing had emerged from the anomaly, but he could understand why the sudden appearance of something that looked like the world’s largest diamond had given rise to very understandable consternation.

“Calm down!” Ryan bellowed in his best parade ground voice.

Silence fell almost immediately.

“How long has that been here?” Stephen asked.

“It’s just appeared,” a stocky, grey-haired man in his 60s said. The man held a large flashlight in his hand and was wearing a Wookey Hole sweatshirt. He looked wary, and more than a little puzzled by the arrival of three armed men, but apart from that seemed to be taking things in his stride.

Lester stepped forward. “Colin, it’s me, Jim Lester. I’m with a team from the Home Office. Some wild animals have got loose in the valley. We’re making sure they all get rounded up safely.”

The man called Colin gave Lester an appraising look then said, “Aye? Well, we need to get these folks out of here. Can we get out past the Witch?”

“We could a moment ago,” Stephen said, but something had started the hairs on the back of his neck prickling, and when he turned round, he could see white light fighting for dominance with the green lamp light they’d left behind. And the white was winning.

“Crap,” Ryan muttered.

Stephen shot him a sympathetic glance. This really wasn’t turning out to be one of their better days.

**Wookey Hole, Somerset, 12.29pm.**

“Is there another way out?”

Lester shook his head in response to Ryan’s question.

The only other way out of the chamber involved free-diving the sump and there was no way any of them would be doing that. He might make it through, but none of the tourists would and anyway, the way the anomalies were coming and going, they probably wouldn’t have to wait very long before one or other of their current problems disappeared, leaving then with a clear route to an exit.

“Then we wait.”

They had ten adults and four children on their hands. Two of the kids were no more than toddlers. The others looked to be in their early teens. Their parents were doing their best to put on a brave face, but they weren’t entirely succeeding. The rest of the party ranged in age from 20 to late 60s, and every one of them looked confused and uneasy.

One of the party, a man in his forties with a hipster beard and straggly ponytail demanded, “What the hell is that?”

“It’s a magnetic incongruity caused by freak weather conditions on the surface,” Lester said. “If you’ve got anything metal on you, hang onto it.”

The man glared at Lester. “What sort of idiot do you take me for?”

Lester was tempted to tell the man he had no idea what sort of idiot he was as they’d only just met, but in the interests of public relations, he simply dispensed one of his best basilisk glares and said, “Please don’t frighten the children.”

“You’re carrying guns,” the man said. “Don’t lecture me about not scaring the kids.”

“Is that an Armalite?” the teenage boy said, his eyes fixed on Ryan’s assault rifle.

“It’s an M4,” Ryan said.

“Cool!”

The man with the ponytail glared at them both.

“Incoming!” Stephen said quietly.

“Everyone stay exactly where you are!” Ryan ordered.

The anomaly pulsed, expanding as they always did when something was about to come through. Lester wondered what the chances were of it being something small and harmless. But based on what they’d been encountering elsewhere, he had a nasty feeling he was going to be doomed to disappointment.

A moment later, something that looked rather like a mini tyrannosaurus came bounding through. Unsurprisingly, several of the tourists screamed loudly. The creature turned its head to one side, listening as well as looking. It was a drab, mottled green-brown colour. Lester dimly remembered one of Cutter’s lectures on the subject of colouring. He’d postulated that this sort of colouring denoted a predator that was well-suited to blending in with a forest environment. Even without the sharp teeth set in strong jaws obviously designed for both biting and tearing, Lester would have known that this wasn’t an herbivore.

Stephen calmly dropped to one knee, steadied his EMP rifle and hit the creature with a shock level designed to encourage it to get the hell out of there.

It threw its head back and let out a noise somewhere between the bark of a dog and the howl of a wolf, but it obviously didn’t feel like hanging around, for which Lester was profoundly grateful.

“What the hell was it?” he muttered to Stephen.

“Dwarf allosaur,” Stephen said, equally quietly. “The same thing that took Tony Keegan down.”

“Fucking hell!” It was the man with the pony-tail again.

Before anyone else had chance to say anything, one of the older women in the party rounded on him angrily. “That sort of language isn’t going to help anyone, young man, now be quiet and let these gentlemen get on with their jobs! They seem to know what they’re doing, which is more than can be said for the rest of us.”

Lester shot the woman a grateful glance. The last thing they needed was hassle from the people they were trying to protect. “Ryan, I’m going to see if we can get past the one in the other chamber. Waiting doesn’t seem quite so attractive any more.”

Ryan nodded, and made no attempt to stop him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Wookey Hole, Somerset, 12.35pm.**

Lester ducked down and made his way through what the cave guides called the Witch’s Chimney and out into the chamber on the other side. The anomaly was actually off to one side, at the bottom of a slope that led down to the underground course of the River Axe as it made its way through the caves and finally out to daylight in the valley.

The Witch of Wookey seemed to be staring straight down at it, an expression of utter disapproval on her petrified features.

So far as Lester could tell, nothing had come through the anomaly in this chamber and it was far enough away from the path for them to be able to get past it in safety. That seemed a better option that staying in chamber three and tangling with allosaurs. If necessary, they could cram everyone into the wooden guides’ hut until they got the all clear from Sean Burns to make their way back down the valley to the relative safety of the hotel.

He ducked back into chamber four and relayed the situation to Ryan.

The soldier heard him out and then nodded. “Take point with Colin. Once you start moving, don’t stop, no matter what happens back here. Get everyone out and keep them there.” He turned to the group and raised his voice. “We’re taking you all out of here now. Keep the children in the middle of the group and keep moving. Watch your heads on the first part and try not to slip, but move as quickly as you can. Do you understand?”

The woman who’d quelled the annoying ponytailed man nodded and promptly started marshalling the others. She reminded Lester of his old headmistress and he wouldn’t have been in the slightest bit surprised to learn she was a retired teacher.

He moved to the head of the group and started to lead them out of the cave. There were several gasps of surprise as people came face to face with the second anomaly, but he ignored their reactions and pressed on. He’d got as far as the Witch when he heard the first shots from Ryan’s M4 and realised that neither Ryan nor Stephen had followed them through the Witch’s Chimney.

“Stay in front and keep moving,” he told Colin. “I’m going to bring up the rear.”

The guide nodded and carried on. Lester stepped to one side, waiting until the last member of the group had passed him before he fell in behind them. If Ryan and Stephen were otherwise engaged, he was going to have to make sure nothing came after them.

As he turned to follow the group, a dark shape slithered out of the anomaly and vanished into the pool, leaving behind an ever-widening series of ripples on the surface of the water. Lester gripped his EMP rifle harder, but there was nothing to be seen.

More shots rang out in chamber three.

Hating the necessity of leaving Stephen and Ryan behind, Lester hurried to catch up the back of the group.

Getting the tourists to safety had to be his highest priority.

**Wookey Hole, Somerset. 12.35pm.**

The fourth allosaur through the anomaly came out with a bound that would have put a giant kangaroo to shame.

One had been taken down by a heavy charge from Stephen’s EMP and Ryan had dropped another with a three round burst from his rifle in the hope that the smell of blood might prove to be a distraction.

The third was circling them warily, showing no signs of wanting to go back to its own time. Stephen was currently trying – and failing – to get a clear shot with his EMP. He’d missed twice so far.

The latest one to join the party came straight at Ryan, jaws agape. He squeezed the trigger, but at the same moment, the allosaur leaped sideways and the bullets tore harmlessly into the cave wall. Ryan fired again, but the same thing happened. The dinosaur kept moving, leaping around like a jumping jack. They were fast, agile and fucking dangerous. He’d seem the damage one of them had done to Keegan’s leg and had no desire to end up on the receiving end of their pit-bull jaws.

The anomaly was still glittering brightly and had lost none of its magnetic pull. Not for the first time, Ryan wondered what sort of attraction the rips in time exerted over the creatures, but whatever it was, he could really do without it right now. Another three rounds buried themselves in the cave wall then he had to jump sideways to get out of the way of the allosaur’s line of attack.

The large, dimly-lit chamber provided no cover whatsoever. It was devoid of the sort of decoration they’d seen in the rest of the cave, and had bare, brown rock walls that sloped down to the hard mud floor. The only advantage it gave them was that there was no hiding place for the allosaurs either, but the downside to that was it allowed the fucking things plenty of room to manoeuvre and left them open to attack from too many possible directions.

“Hart, we need to follow the others, we’re too exposed here. They’ve had a good head start.”

There were narrower spots on the way out where they could make a more effective stand. All they had to do was reach one of them.

Trusting Ryan to cover his retreat, Stephen turned and made a dash for the low section. Once through, he went down on one knee, EMP slung over his back, as he held his Browning pistol in a two-handed grip. At close range, the 9mm bullets would have the stopping power they needed if – or rather when – the allosaurs decided to follow them

Ryan backed up, spraying a burst of automatic fire across the chamber as a deterrent, before he turned and ducked through, following Stephen.

“There’s more on their way,” Stephen said, as he straightened up and stepped away from the low section of passage.

Before Ryan had chance to respond, something reared up out of a pool of water on one side of the passage and scuttled forward, knocking into the back of Stephen’s legs. His lover pitched forward, caught off balance, and struck his head hard on the cave wall with an audible crack.

The creature slithered on past them, its long, low body propelled on four short, stubby legs. It had a huge, rounded flat head, a thick neck and a long body with an even longer tail, reminding Ryan of a giant salamander, if such things existed. Before he’d even had chance to bring his pistol to bear on the creature, it had disappeared into the underground river, leaving Stephen lying face down on the path, out for the count.

Ryan swore vehemently, and dropped to his knees next to his lover. Stephen was still breathing, but he was unconscious.

The bark of an allosaurus drew his attention back to the low section of passage separating them from the other chamber. He could see one of the creatures crouching down, obviously about to make a dash at them. He grabbed the Browning that Stephen had dropped and put a bullet in the dinosaur’s head. It fell to the ground as heavily as Stephen had done, buying Ryan some much needed time.

He grabbed Stephen under the armpits and tried to haul him out of reach of anything that might manage to get through the Witch’s Chimney. Right now he felt far too exposed for comfort with an open anomaly behind him, busy disgorging what looked like an entire pack of dwarf allosaurs, and another to one side, possibly responsible for the giant salamander. There was no way he’d be able to carry Stephen and still use either of his weapons with any degree of ease, but he’d feel happier if he could at least get somewhere more defensible. At the moment he felt like a sitting duck. He slung the EMP rife over his shoulder along with his M4, every instinct warning him against leaving any sort of weapon behind, even though they had now started using lethal force.

Stephen was heavy, despite the fact that he wasn’t carrying an ounce of spare fat. Ryan fell into a routine whereby he dragged his unconscious lover a couple of metres, then fired a few rounds behind him to discourage anything from following. He had a couple of smoke grenades in his tac vest, but they’d be no use in a closed environment. He was just going to have to deal with this by conventional means.

By the time he’d dragged Stephen to the foot of the first flight of steps Ryan was sweating like a pig and had used a full magazine. Laying his lover’s injured head down as gently as he could, Ryan dropped the mag out of his M4 and slipped a fresh one into its place. He had plenty of spares, so running out of bullets wasn’t high on his list of things he needed to worry about. He took the opportunity to reload Stephen’s Browning as well and dropped that into a pocket of his jacket.

He went down on one knee, and cupped his lover’s face in one hand. “Stephen, can you hear me?” Keeping his voice low and steady was an effort, but it had to be done.

He could hear the scrape of clawed feet on the concrete path and knew they were about to have company. Ryan took hold of Stephen’s black leather jacket and started to haul him up the steps as quickly as he could. He needed to reach the narrowest part of the passage above them. Once there, he had a good chance of holding the fuckers back until either he managed to take them all down or Burns managed to send some lads in as back-up.

Halfway up the steps, he heard a groan from Stephen. Relief coursed through him and he redoubled his efforts.

A few steps from the top, he had to lower Stephen down and swing up his M4. There were three allosaurs bounding towards him as though they had springs underneath them. They were quick, clever and sodding determined. He managed to take the lead one down, but the others jumped sideways, avoiding the bullets.

Another groan from Stephen was accompanied by movement as his lover tried to sit up. “What the fu..?”

“Something knocked you over, you hit your head,” Ryan said, snapping off another couple of shots to no good purpose. You’ve been out for a few minutes.”

Stephen muttered something Ryan didn’t catch. He managed to sit up on the steps then, when he realised their situation, he shuffled backwards and grabbed the metal handrail in an attempt to get upright. From the sharp intake of breath that followed the action, Ran deduced that his head hurt – a lot. But he was conscious and moving. That was what mattered.

As the two allosaurs rushed at him, Ryan drew in a long breath and held it. His first shot went wide. Time seemed to slow down as it always did in a combat situation. He had time to notice the sharp dark eyes set either side of a strong head, the open mouth, red tongue flickering between ivory-coloured teeth…

The burst of bullets took it in the chest but momentum kept it coming. Ryan pivoted on one leg, kicking out with a booted foot to send it flying back down the steps. It landed at the bottom in a crumpled heap and didn’t get up again.

The second one leaped at him, jaws wide. It was close…. Too close…

Ryan kicked out again, knocking its jaws shut with a painful snap. It crashed into him, carrying him backwards into the cave wall. Ryan ducked down and its jaws missed him by no more than six centimetres as he moved away, keeping the rock wall at his back, bringing up the M4 and firing by instinct rather than aiming, hoping none of the bullets would clip the metal railings and ricochet around the passage.

The allosaurus leaped at him again, but this time another boot struck at it.

Stephen’s kick took the dinosaur in the belly, hard. It turned, snapping at him. He rolled away.

Ryan pulled the Browning pistol out of his pocket. “Catch!”

Stephen’s hand shot out, but he missed and the Browning clattered on the floor, skidding just out of reach. Stephen rolled after it. The allosaur jumped at him, seeking the weaker prey by instinct. They were too close for Ryan to want to risk firing his rifle in such close proximity to his lover. He changed his grip on the M4 and swung it like a club at the dinosaur’s head, following up with another kick. It snapped at him, teeth sinking into the material of his combat trousers, but fortunately not meeting in his flesh.

Ryan pivoted on one foot again, kicking out as hard as he could.

The allosaur was too quick for him.

It jumped, jaws wide open, slamming him back into the wall.

A pistol shot echoed loudly in the narrow passage and the allosaur wavered on its feet. A second shot finished it off.

Stephen held a hand down and hauled Ryan to his feet.

“Nice shooting,” Ryan said, pulling Stephen into a quick kiss. “Especially after that thump on the head. I thought I’d lost you there for a moment.”

Stephen grinned at him. “I got the buggers, didn’t I?”

Ryan looked down at the dead dinosaur at his feet and then held up two fingers to his lover. “How many?”

The grin widened. “Two. Do you really think I’d risk shooting that close to you if I was seeing double?”

Ryan let warm relief course through him and wrapped his arm around his lover’s waist. “Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here before any more of the sods decide to come visiting.”

**Wookey Hole, Somerset, 12.42pm.**

Doing his best to ignore the pounding in his head, Stephen made his way up the last light of steps in the cave. He might not be seeing double, but he did have a crashing headache and gentle probing with his fingers told him he had a tender lump on his hairline where his head had struck the cave wall.

They reached the gate in time to see Sean Burns running up the path, three other lads at his back. Ryan pulled one of the smoke grenades out of his pocket and tossed it into the cave. If any more allosaurs had come through, that would at least keep them away from the entrance area. He slammed the gate shut and Colin, the cave guide, locked it shut.

“Are you both all right?” Lester demanded.

“More or less,” Stephen said.

“There’s a bloody great big lump on your forehead,” Lester told him.

“The rock was harder than my head.”

“What’s happening in the valley?” Ryan demanded as Burns arrived.

“They’ve all vanished,” the sergeant told him. “Five minutes ago. Connor confirmed they all went off his screens at exactly the same moment. “We’re going to need to take a few of the buggers back with us to the Hall. We couldn’t get them all back in time.” He gestured to the door of the cave. “What’s the score in there?”

“Several dead dinosaurs and two open anomalies when we left,” Stephen told him. “Dwarf allosaurs, the same as the one that got Tony. And something that looked like a giant salamander. I’m going to need to consult Connor on that one.”

“Keep the door shut for an hour and we’ll investigate then,” Ryan said. “As soon as we’re sure the ones out here aren’t coming back, we can go in mob-handed.”

Burns grinned. “Sounds good. Shall we get this lot escorted down to the hotel?”

Stephen took the walk back down the hill slowly, doing his best not to jar his head. He knew he was going to need to be checked out in hospital to make sure he hadn’t fractured his skull, and he wouldn’t be adverse to a hefty dose of painkillers, either.

When they reached the road, he stopped for a moment, leaning on the wall of one of the buildings, feeling more than a little sick. Ryan waited with him, doing a remarkably good job of not fussing, but Stephen could read the concern in his lover’s grey eyes.

“I’ll be fine,” he said quietly. “I bet Claudia’s going to be tearing her hair out by the time she’s finished with that lot.”

“Sooner her than me,” Ryan said. “Public relations isn’t my job. I wanted to deck that idiot with the ponytail.”

Stephen grinned. “What do you find if you lift up a ponytail?”

Ryan looked at him quizzically.

“An arsehole.”

With Ryan’s arm around his waist, they made their way across the car park to the hotel. Lester and Claudia had taken charge of the situation and, in true British fashion, tea was being dispensed in industrial quantities.

They had a hell of a clear-up operation on their hands, but by some minor miracle, especially considering how stretched they had been for resources, no one had died. The news from the hospital was good. The woman with the head injuries had regained consciousness in the ambulance on the way to hospital and was lucid, but had no memory of the events immediately before she was knocked out, which was fortunate. Tony Keegan was in the process of being patched up. The gash on his leg from the allosaur’s teeth wasn’t as deep as they’d first though and he was expected to make a full recovery.

Stephen’s head was throbbing and he’d started to feel utterly knackered from a combination of adrenaline fatigue with a side order of concussion. He was glad of Ryan’s steadying arm as they made their way over to join Lester and Claudia outside the hotel.

Things could certainly have ended up a hell of a lot worse. There were a lot of loose ends to tie up, but for the moment all Stephen cared about was that he had Ryan’s arm around him and they were both mostly intact.

Everything else – even giant sodding salamanders – could wait.


End file.
